When Clara Ortega was growing up in Yuma, Arizona, she often found herself adding color and cool designs to the barren walls of her family home.
Years later, after relocating to Columbus, she now hopes to turn that passion into a career as a local painter and art teacher.
“Growing up, my mom had no design aesthetic, like the house was just very plain,” Ortega said. “When I had my own room during high school, I started painting anything and everything I could just to make it look like something.”
Ortega said she has always had a passion for art but has taken the last three years to study different forms of painting and multi-dimensional designs. She plans to start featuring her work in art shows and festivals starting in 2024.
“I’m just sticking to a routine of certain hours that I have to put in to finish pieces,” Ortega said.
“That keeps me motivated to keep creating, but the goal is to do more markets next year because I’ve got the setup. I just need the pieces and the time to finish them now.”
Ortega said her art often reflects abstract versions of nature and life around her, using paints and multi-dimensional pieces such as cards to bring colorful depictions onto the canvas.
“My art is really quirky, and often it has very bright colors,” Ortega said. “There are a lot of repeating elements as well, such as graffiti that I learned when I was younger. I’d rather spend time on good ideas than on the bad ones. It’s just something that needs to stick. For example, I’m working on a piece right now that depicts an avocado dressed as the Virgin Mary.”
Ortega first became interested in pursuing a career in art after coming to Columbus for a degree in music at the Mississippi University for Women in 2013. While she never finished school, her introduction to Columbus and its local artists influenced her to follow the career path herself.
“I started seeking art out especially when I moved here,” Ortega said. “My first week here, I went to the Rosenzweig Arts Center, looked around and thought it was so cool that there was a local art gallery in my town. So, slowly, I visited more museums, met more artists and started interacting.”
Ortega even began teaching art classes and designing children’s bookcases and murals while working at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library downtown intermittently from 2013 to 2022.
“There’s like 10 different display cases that get swapped out seasonally, so you have to design arts and crafts to curate them and promote collections,” Ortega said. “My supervisor delegated that task to me in the children’s area. Then eventually, the holidays came around, like Halloween and Christmas, and she challenged me to start designing murals and backdrops. Eventually, I was promoted to head of adult services and started teaching art classes.”
From there, she continued working on pieces but also took time during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to study books on painting and graphic art.
In 2021, she also signed on to be a visual art teacher during the Columbus Art Council’s summer arts camp.
“I really started to see myself in this capacity of an artist because I was doing the teaching,” she said. “I was creating alongside the kids and exploring the same materials in the ways that I was asking them to.”
After a few years of honing her skills, Ortega is now putting a collection of work together inspired by nature.
“I’d love to keep teaching,” she said. “It’s so fun to see the process specifically. That’s why I liked working with children was to see where they take things because it’s so unexpected.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 30 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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